June 13 2010 » » Terrace Standard
Getting Youth on the Water
By Molly McNulty
THIS SUMMER eight lucky youth will have the opportunity to take part in a unique program which will provide river raft guide training, along with invaluable knowledge about the watershed.
The program is called Youth On the Water (YOW), developed by Chris Gee with the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition. This is the second session for the program, which is free for the youth, taking place last summer in the Hazeltons. The program is now expanding with sessions this summer in Terrace, Smithers, Moricetown and Hazelton.
Gee developed the program because of a personal love of the river and water, and says that any means of connecting youth with the watershed is a valuable endeavour. “The idea is to connect young people to water in such a way that they take the opportunity to understand the value of the river beyond resource extraction,” says Gee. “It’s a great opportunity to learn tangible and transferable job skills, the notion that a person can maneuver down a river, that is a huge self esteem booster.”
Youth will learn swift water rescue and river raft guiding techniques, but guest speakers will cover educational units on specific topics such as fish species and life-cycles, wildlife habitat, First Nations culture and other current threats to the Skeena River watershed. YOW participants in Hazelton last year were able to take part in Ali Howard’s historic swim of the Skeena River by meeting her and her team on the water and guiding them into the community.
“I was absolutely thrilled, I could not believe the change in the young people, the confidence that was evident in their appearance, they way they walked, talked…some kids in the program didn’t know that right in their backyard they have a river people come from around the world to visit,” he says. Gee also notes that another important aspect of the program is to engage youth for future battles to protect the watershed from industrial projects. “We can only sustain our energy to fight against bad industrial [plans] for so long, big companies like Shell or Enbridge they can out wait all of us, what do they care to wait 15 to 20 years …the struggle now is people will be burnt out and tired, if we can in some way connect young people so they can recognize the need to take up the struggle against these poorly planned industrial projects,” he says.
Kim Ward-Robberts will facilitate the program in Terrace this summer, which runs from July 19 to 30. She says they will start out on the lake and gradually move onto an easy section of the Copper or Skeena River, with help from Hatha Callis with Skeena Valley Expeditions.
For this year’s session Ward-Robberts is looking for a letter of intent from eight enthusiastic youth (four boys, four girls) ages 16 to 20. “We want people who want to be out there,” she says.
Interested youth can send a letter of intent to Ward-Robberts at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), deadline is the end of June.
